Help migrants by freeing up shelters

Will the city be destroyed by the migrant crisis as Mayor Adams has recently stated? Probably not, but it will have a very negative impact on the city’s ability to provide essential services and so in some respects the mayor is correct.

No one can blame Adams for being frustrated and using strong language to describe the challenge he is facing, especially considering the lack of support from the governor and president.

It is now estimated that we are receiving 10,000 migrants a month with no end in sight, which will cost an estimated $12 billion in the next three years. Even when the city has experienced difficult circumstances in the past like a hurricane, it is usually over in a few days with the consequences being manageable. However, the migrant crisis is like the city being hit by a hurricane every week!

Recently the mayor has hinted that families with children may need to be housed in congregate settings such as large tents. I believe this would be a mistake as it will give the advocates and the media ammunition to criticize him and it is dangerous. The thousands of families that have arrived up to now have been very well taken care of with hotel rooms and food. However, as we see the total number of migrants entering the city exceed 100,000, the system has become overwhelmed.

However, the solution is not putting families in tents but instead getting 20,000 families of native New Yorkers — many of whom have been in shelter for well more than a year — to move to permanent housing.

As a former deputy commissioner at the city Department of Homeless Services, I have never seen a time when the shelter providers (the nonprofits who run the shelters under contract with the city) were given so many tools to move families out into housing. The city rent voucher has been raised from $1,200 to $2,200 a month, there are thousands of section 8 vouchers and thousands of vacancies in the Housing Authority.

The administration must put pressure on the providers to move families out of shelter and into housing and start with the long term stayers which are those families in shelter for well more than a year. By moving these families into housing you will be greatly helping them while at the same time creating vacancies in the shelter system that can be filled by migrant families instead of placing them in congregate settings.

With regard to the initiative of serving migrants with a notice that they must move out and reapply within 60 days, and a new proposal to allow only 30 days, I understand the frustration on the part of the administration with more buses arriving every day but I believe these notices are being given to the wrong group and the 30-day notice is completely unreasonable.

Instead of the migrants, these notices should be given to the native New Yorkers who have been in the adult shelter system for more than a year. The average length of stay for single adults is 412 days according to the most recent Mayor’s Management Report. It was unheard of in the past that this population spent more than a year in shelter.

For the most part, these native shelter residents have family and friends in the city and are not barred from working such as is the case with the migrants. Therefore, these single adults, except those who have disabilities, have a much better chance of moving out with the help of a city voucher than the migrants from a foreign country. Another group that should be examined are the adult families without children, as their average length of stay is now an incredible 750 days!

Once again, by moving shelter clients out into housing we can greatly improve their lives and create vacancies for the migrants.

Some complaints have been expressed that the city Human Resources Administration that processes the housing vouchers is severely backlogged and understaffed. Obviously, more staffing is important, but in the meantime I would like to suggest a pilot project to expedite the approval of the vouchers. Why not try delegating the authority to process and authorize the vouchers to the social workers at some of the larger shelters and then have HRA do a quick review and sign off to get these vouchers out the door.

We must start thinking outside the box if we are going to make any progress on these problems.

Mascali is a former deputy commissioner at the New York City Department of Homeless Services and a former vice president for supportive housing at Women in Need.